Wireless communications systems of various kinds are well understood in the art. Orthogonal frequency division multiplexing (OFDM) is a particular way to support high data rate broadband systems that operate in a multipath environment. This approach divides a radio frequency channel into several narrower bandwidth subcarriers and transmits data simultaneously on each subcarrier. Meanwhile, multiple-input multiple-output techniques allow simultaneous transmission of different data streams from multiple antennas over the same frequency band, thus increasing the spectral efficiency significantly. Combining orthogonal frequency division multiplexing with multiple-input multiple-output techniques offers great practical potential to provide very high data rate wireless services. Unfortunately, present orthogonal frequency division multiplexing and multiple-input multiple-output (MIMO) techniques do not describe a complete system design that will readily support such a combination, and in particular do not address a link-level design that will support a compatible combination of such techniques.
A need therefore exists for a way to at least partially meet such requirements. Any such improvement should be efficient in operation, relatively inexpensive, and effective.